The Radical Psychology Network (RadPsyNet) is an organization with the goal of encouraging reform in the field of
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...
. It began in Toronto in 1993 when two dozen people attended a discussion at the
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
convention entitled "Will Psychology Pay Attention to its Own Radical Critics?"
Today the group has more than 500 members in over three dozen countries. Members include
psychologists and others, academics and practitioners, faculty and students,
psychotherapists and patients. It publishes the online ''Radical Psychology Journal'' and sponsors an active email discussion list.
The aim of the group is to change the ''
status quo'' of psychology. Challenging psychology's traditional focus on minor reform, members emphasise enhancing human welfare by working for fundamental social change. They claim that psychology itself has too often oppressed people rather than liberated them and they work to redress this imbalance. In keeping with this aim, RadPsyNet co-founders Dennis Fox and Isaac Prilleltensky co-edited ''Critical Psychology: An Introduction'' in 1997, and many RadPsyNet members are active in academic critical psychology as well as in opposition to
psychological abuses.
See also
*
Critical psychology
Critical psychology is a perspective on psychology that draws extensively on critical theory. Critical psychology challenges the assumptions, theories and methods of mainstream psychology and attempts to apply psychological understandings in diffe ...
*
Psychopolitical validity, coined by Isaac Prilleltensky in 2003 as a way to evaluate
Community Psychology
Community psychology is concerned with the community as the unit of study. This contrasts with most psychology which focuses on the individual. Community psychology also studies the community as a context for the individuals within it,Jim Orfor ...
research
References
External links
New Ideas and Old Values in PsychotherapyRadical Psychology Network homepage
{{Anti-psychiatry
Anti-psychiatry
Psychology organizations based in the United States
Psychological societies
Criticism of science